Earth Beat, 12 August 2011. We go six feet under to examine what happens when our time has come. From greener ways to go, to capturing the aftermath of city killings (slideshow below), we explore the landscape of death.

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Biodegradable shrouds
Pia Interlandi is a fashion designer, and when her grandfather was buried in an ill-fitting suit, it got her thinking about designing clothes for the dead that decompose in natural burials, where bodies are places in shallow graves, so they can break down more quickly (more photos below).

Promession
What if there was a way of doing the whole ashes to ashes, dust to dust thing without using so much energy, or releasing harmful emissions? Well, turns out there is. It’s called Promession. And that’s the way Swedish biologist Susan Wiigh Masak wanted her parents to go a couple of years ago. Susan has been trying to persuade various countries to introduce Promession for more than 20 years.

She explains what Promession is, and reveals that she’s still waiting for permission for her parents to go through the process. And her persistence may finally be about to pay off (illustrated description of Promession below).

The Natural Death Centre
Rosie Inman Cook believes funerals can be all-singing all-dancing affairs… a celebration of someone’s life, rather than a depressing ceremony to mark their death. She runs the Natural Death Centre in the UK, and talks to guest host Marijke Peters about what a natural funeral can be.

Eaten by vultures
In Tibetan culture, sky burials, or placing bodies on mountainsides to be eaten by vultures, are the most common way of dealing with the dead. Travel writer Colin Thubron (pictured below) learnt about the custom when he was on a pilgrimage around Mount Kailash, which is one of the world’s holiest mountains. He talks about the custom and reads from his book To a Mountain in Tibet.

Resomation
Among the new and greener ways to go is a process called Resomation – a process in which alkaline solution breaks down the body in a matter of a few hours. Dean Fisher is a Resomation technician with bodies that have been donated to science, and he joins Marijke to tell her more.
Further reading: Get your body liquefied when you die - New Scientist

The landscape of murder
What does unnatural death look like? And what imprint does it leave on the landscape? Photographer Antonio Olmos has embarked on a project to record the scenes of every single murder in London this year. That project’s taken him to parts of the city he’d never visited before, and forced him to look at London with a fresh pair of eyes (click on thumbnail to pause slideshow).
Click image for slideshow - use arrows to scroll